The sun set slowly behind the horizon of Lys, painting the sky in unsettling shades of crimson and gold. Inside a room draped with heavy tapestries, a silence reigned, broken only by the distant crying of gulls over the harbor. Aerion sat on a low stool, bringing himself level with the children. His heart hammered like a bird’s, yet his gaze remained steady.
Before him on a wide divan sat three little ones—three focused faces, three pairs of eyes that had seen far too much for their young bodies.
"I held you beneath my heart for months," Aerion began, and his voice, usually full of feigned madness or refined irony, now sounded clear and sincere. "I was the one who gave birth to you in agony. I am the one who washed you and kept you warm when the world seemed too cold."
Maegor stiffened imperceptibly, his small fingers clutching the edge of a pillow. Aenys tilted his head to the side, studying his father with his heterochromatic eye, while Rhaenyra straightened her back as if she already felt the weight of a mantle on her shoulders.
Aerion paused briefly, and the air in the room seemed to thicken. "I am not Visenya."
He looked directly into Maegor’s eyes. The boy flinched, his pupils dilating, and in the depths of his violet gaze, a memory flashed of cold dragonsteel and the empty halls of the Red Keep.
"I am not Rhaenys," Aerion shifted his gaze to Aenys. The boy turned pale, pressing a hand to his chest as if he felt again the frailty of a body that had once betrayed him under the pressure of the crown.
"And I am not Aemma," he gently touched Rhaenyra’s cheek. The girl caught her breath, and for a moment, the horror of a labor that ended in darkness and the longing for a father who did not choose her flickered in her eyes.
"I am not them, and I will never be them," Aerion continued firmly. "I am your Muña. My only desire is for you to live a worthy life, one where you never wake up thinking, 'If only things were different.' I want happiness for you—real happiness, not bought with the blood of brothers or the pain of subjects. And I will do everything for that."
The children were silent. It was not a childish silence of misunderstanding, but the heavy stillness of adult souls trying to process what they had heard.
"Now, I want to know what you want for yourselves. Not as rulers of the past, but as my children. I am not asking for an answer now. Think. You have a week to understand what your heart desires. But remember one thing..."
Aerion drew them all to him, embracing them so tightly it was as if he were trying to protect them from fate itself. His scent, warm, omega-like, with notes of cedar, enveloped them.
"Whoever you were then, now you are my children. And I love you more than life itself. Even more than the fire that once burned me."
He kissed each of them on the crown of their heads and quietly slipped out, leaving them alone with their shadows.
The week in the estate passed in a strange, tense quiet. The triplets hardly played. They whispered in corners, walked in the garden holding hands, and sometimes Aerion saw Maegor heatedly arguing a point to his brother and sister while they listened with bowed heads.
On the seventh evening, they came to his study of their own accord. Maegor walked in front, with Rhaenyra and Aenys a step behind him. They looked not like five-year-old children, but like a delegation of ancient gods.
"Muña," Maegor began. His voice no longer held that cruel steel that frightened the servants. Now, there was resolve. "We have talked. For a long time."
He stepped closer and placed his small palm on Aerion’s hand.
"I do not want to be a king who builds walls out of skulls," he said honestly. "In the past, I hid behind a sword because I feared that without it, I was nobody. Now... I want strength so that no one can ever make you cry or run away. I want to be your shield. If Westeros wants to tear us apart, I will be its executioner, but if they leave us in peace—I will simply be your son."
Aenys raised eyes that no longer held that melancholic sadness.
"I want knowledge, Muña. In the past, I was weak because I did not understand people. I want to know the secrets of the ancient world; I want to learn to heal, not just watch as everything crumbles. I want our home to be a place of peace, not a battlefield."
Rhaenyra took a step forward, head held high.
"I was betrayed by those I trusted," her voice trembled, but she quickly composed herself. "I wanted the crown because I believed only it could give me the right to respect. But now I see you. You have no crown, you are in exile, yet you are stronger than all the kings I ever knew. I want our family to be one. I want four of us to be a pack. And if I have to give up the Iron Throne for that—let it burn in wildfire."
Aerion listened to them, and the tears he had held back for so long finally rolled down his cheeks. He dropped to his knees and pulled them close.
"Oh, my babies," he whispered. "My beautiful, wise dragons."
"We have decided," Aenys added, pressing against his father’s shoulder. "If we return to Westeros, we will back as masters of our own fate. But we will do so only when you say the time has come."
Maegor suddenly smiled, for the first time, truly and childishly.
"And we will ask Uncle Baelor to give us real dragons, Muña. Real ones. Because wooden are boring."
Aerion laughed through his tears. He knew there were many hardships ahead, and that his father Maekar and the King, his grandfather, would not simply take him back. But right now, in this room, he felt that the history of Westeros had just taken a sharp turn.
